There are state-appointed emergency managers running the cities of Detroit, Flint, Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Ecorse and Allen Park and the school districts of Detroit, Highland Park and Muskegon Heights.

The state's new emergency manager law took effect Thursday, March 28.

Flint resident Paul Jordan said he volunteered to be a plaintiff in the lawsuit, calling the law a "blind alley, if not a sideshow."

"It distracts us from really addressing the fundamental problems of Michigan's cities," he said, adding it sacrifices democratic government while not accomplishing anything permanent.

The voters had repealed the state's old emergency manager law, Public Act 4, and the state ignored it by passing Public Act 436, said Jefferson, who is from Flint and was in Detroit for a rally to protest the state's emergency manager law on Thursday.

"They ignored the rights of the people," she said on Friday. "They ignored the voice of the people and continued to proceed as normal.

"I thought as a ... citizen of the United States, we had a right to speak out, to have a voice in what goes on in our life and the fate of our country."

The emergency manager law places cities under the control o f a dictator, making changes that result in no positive impact for the citizens, Jefferson said.

"It is not helping the people, it is making us worse," she said. "It is getting us deeper and deeper in debt.

"If you take and sell of my assets, what do I have left. We are not on a plantation and we are not kept in slavery."